High Maintenance

 

I used to wonder why my daddy seemed to go to the Co-op every day.  Now that I am responsible for keeping all the mechanical things running on this farm, I understand. A tractor, RTV, lawn mowers, weed eaters – one or more of them need something every day.  

Every Friday, I tend to ponder where the week has gone and wonder what I accomplished during the seven days since the last Friday.  Actually, I start my pondering along about Wednesday afternoon when I suddenly realize the week is half gone and what in the world have I been doing and listing in my head all the things I meant to get done this week.  Usually, these ponderings take place while sitting in the swing on my front porch, and I have to admit to myself that sitting in the swing on my front porch is what I’ve mostly been doing all week.   At least I’m not sitting in the house where I would have to ponder all the things in the house I’ve not done all week.

This particular week, I have to say, I have accomplished a few chores I’ve been neglecting.   The neglect is not entirely my fault.  A recalcitrant tractor, an aging lawn mower and an improperly stored spray apparatus are all at fault too.  I won’t even get into my issue with weed eaters.  Are there really people who can replace the string on weed eaters when they run out?  Or is replacing string on weed eaters just a myth?

Masses of rain, heavy dew and hot weather have led to great difficulty keeping up with mowing.  It’s too wet to mow early in the morning, too hot to mow midday and raining by late afternoon during the monsoon season that has covered Middle Tennessee this summer. But I bit the bullet and set out to take care of my yard early in the week.  It’s a slow process when you have to stop every round to clear soggy clumps of grass from the mower deck.  My friend Clay was working on the porch and every time he helped clear the clog, he would say, “It’s the wet grass,” and I would say, “It’s because that flap that covers the opening is not fixed right.”  After about 4 times, he rigged a fix for the flap and I finished the mowing.  Sometimes I am right.

I marked the yard off my list and turned to the bush hog.  I love to run the bush hog.   It’s a fairly mindless task, other than keeping an eye out for rocks and large limbs and making sure you don’t get smacked in the face by low hanging branches.  I do a lot of my writing on the tractor while chopping up grass and small bushes.  Surprisingly, the tractor started with just a moderate amount of persuasion and very little strong language, and I only got slapped in the head once from a cedar branch.  Nothing broke, nothing quit, I didn’t run over any strands of wire, and I didn’t run out of gas.  A red-letter day for mowing!  I sat on my porch the rest of the day and admired my newly manicured field. 

I got cocky.  Success with the mowing went to my head and I decided to do some spraying.  Thus the first trip to the co-op, for brush killer.  After filling the tank on the back of the RTV, I hooked the cables to the battery and flipped the switch.  Nothing happened.  I had to go sit on the porch the rest of the afternoon.  Later I called my go-to advisor for all things farm related and he diagnosed the pump as the likely problem.  “Take it apart,” he said, “and see if it might be frozen.  Especially if you haven’t used it lately.”  Day two of dealing with the sprayer brought success in taking it apart, determining that the pump worked without the toggle switch, thus indicating that the switch was the problem.  So, a new switch (trip two to the co-op) was installed and I was in business for just the price of $1.98 switch.  Or so I thought.  I drove down to the nearest patch of cockle burrs, turned on the switch and pressed the handle of the wand, at which time the spray came out of the handle instead of the nozzle.  Time to sit on the porch for a while to gear up for another trip to the co-op for a new spray wand.    

The next morning I was feeling pretty good about my accomplishments, mowing, bush hogging and spraying all in one week.  I had a meeting in town that day, so I got dressed and started out the door.  Clay’s plan was to finish mowing the back yard.  He met me in the front yard clutching a zip lock bag of parts from the mower.  “It was missing really bad and we noticed that the fuel filter and air filter were really dirty,” he explained apologetically. “So if you can go to the co-op on your way home, we need these parts.”  As I said in the beginning, I know now why my daddy used to go there every day.